Chapter 15—Hyperbola or Parabola
We may, perhaps, be astonished to find Barbicane and his companions so little occupied with the future reserved for them in their metal prison which was bearing them through the infinity of space. Instead of asking where they were going, they passed their time making experiments, as if they had been quietly installed in their own study.
We might answer that men so strong-minded were above such anxieties—that they did not trouble themselves about such trifles—and that they had something else to do than to occupy their minds with the future.
The truth was that they were not masters of their projectile; they could neither check its course, nor alter its direction.
A sailor can change the head of his ship as he pleases; an aeronaut can give a vertical motio
